Posts in Category: data security

The proliferation of cyberattacks on healthcare providers is well known, with new reports continuing to highlight the problem.

More than 216 hospitals were included in 1,798 breaches between Oct. 21, 2009 and Dec. 31, 2016, according to a report last week in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Additionally, 33 hospitals, or 15 percent, reported more than one breach. Of the 141 affected acute care hospitals, 52 were major academic medical centers.

How would you like to have to tell 34,000 patients that their data had been hacked? That’s the situation that Quest Diagnostics found itself in recently after hackers stole health information including names, birth dates, telephone numbers and lab results.

The number of clinicians who use smartphones and other mobile devices on the job is rising rapidly, and so is the number of facilities that have created mobile device management strategies to cope. "Organizations with a documented mobility strategy have nearly doubled, and in-house use of pagers has increased slightly during the past two years," according to Health Data Management.
Almost 90 percent of physicians surveyed reported using smartphones, while about half of nurses and other staff members use them. In response, more than 60 percent of hospitals surveyed have a documented mobile device strategy. (The survey, by mobile messaging service vendor Spok, included responses from about 550 hospitals.)
The leading mobile devices used in hospitals are:
Smartphones (78 percent)
In-house pagers (71 percent)
Wi-Fi phones (69 percent)
Wide-area pagers (57 percent)
Tablets (52 percent)
Security and privacy, of course, are huge concerns for those setting mobile... read more

GAO Recommends Corrective Action by Department of Health and Human Services
More than 113 million electronic health records were breached in 2015, a year that saw a total of 56 cybersecurity attacks in healthcare alone. That's a 13-fold increase from 2006 to 2015.
The Government Accountability Office isn't going to let those cybersecurity failures go unremarked upon. The GAO last week came down hard on the Department of Health and Human Services, pointing out a number of weaknesses in efforts by HHS to help health plans and other providers protect data.
"HHS has established an oversight program for compliance with privacy and security regulations, but its actions did not always fully verify that the regulations were implemented," wrote the GAO in a report released Sept. 26. The report also called out HHS for giving technical assistance "that was not pertinent to identified problems" in cybersecurity, and for failing to follow up on cases it investigated.
In short, the GAO... read more

ACA, population health will be game changers in next three years, say hospital execs
C-suite leaders predict that their most important areas of focus in the next three years will be high-value post-acute care networks and innovative approaches to care delivery, according to Premier Inc.'s spring Economic Outlook. The impact that the Affordable Care Act and population health management will have on care delivery is the reason these areas of focus will be so important, executives say. "About 95 percent said expanding high-value post-acute care networks is crucial to population health efforts," FierceHealthcare reports. "In addition, 94 percent said such networks are one of their greatest challenges."
ACC notifies 1,400 institutions of potential data breach
More than 1,000 institutions have been notified by the American College of Cardiology (ACC) that patient data from the National Cardiovascular Data Registry (NCDR) might have been breached. "After discovering the issue in... read more

LUMEDX does the research for you! Here are some of the top stories in healthcare this week.
Security: Hospital pays ransom to get its data back from hackers
Security experts are concerned that a Southern California hospital paid a $17,000 ransom in bitcoins to hackers who infiltrated and disabled its network, saying that agreeing to the ransomers' demands could set a bad precedent. The hackers had encrypted the hospital's computer network and demanded the ransom to provide a digital decryption key to unlock it.
Healthcare could be major issue in presidential race
The future of U.S. healthcare--especially Obamacare, Medicare, and Medicaid--will be determined in this year's presidential election, and the candidates are offering starkly different visions. Democrat Hillary Clinton would uphold and expand the Affordable Health Act, while her primary opponent, Bernie Sanders, would replace it with a single-payer system. Republican Donald Trump expressed support for some facets... read more

CMS and health insurers announce alignment and simplification of quality measures
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and America's Health Insurance Plans (the health plans' trade group) announced that they have agreed on seven sets of clinical quality measures. The standardized measures are designed to help payers and consumers shopping for high-quality care. "These measures support multi-payer alignment, for the first time, on core measures primarily for physician quality programs," according to the CMS. This work is informing the CMS’s implementation of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA).
Supreme Court: What will happen to healthcare cases after Justice Scalia's death?
A number of healthcare-related cases are in limbo following the death of conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Feb. 12. "The court is weighing a case about data sharing with potential implications for insurers and state... read more

Did you have a chance to check out the latest news from the healthIT community? Let us help keep you up to date on the stories you won't want to miss.
Healthcare execs advised to focus on consolidations, emergency preparedness, value-based care for 2016
Healthcare trends to watch this year include hospital consolidations and the continued shift away from fee-for-service payment models to value-based care, say hospital executives surveyed by FierceHealthcare. “'Providers will come together in a range of affiliations/partnerships as part of growth and cost reduction strategies, short of full-on mergers and acquisitions,’ according to Chris Van Gorder, CEO and president of Scripps Health in San Diego.”
Ambulatory EHRs should gain steam through 2020
There are many reasons to shift toward ambulatory inpatient electronic health records, according to a new report by Frost & Sullivan. The report predicts that low returns and on-premise EHR limitations will motivate... read more

Did you have a chance to check out the latest healthcare IT news stories around the Web? We’ve captured the top industry news stories from this week that you won’t want to miss.
Will Healthcare Data Analytics Suffer if DeSalvo Leaves ONC?
According to Healthcare IT Analytics, Karen DeSalvo, MD, MPH, MSc, may soon move from her role as the head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Healthcare IT (ONC) to become the HHS Assistant Secretary for Health. In her short time at the ONC, DeSalvo has overseen early attestations for Stage 2 meaningful use while promoting interoperability, clinical analytics, and population health management.
HHS, USDA Invest $1B in Rural Health, Care Coordination
The Department of Health and Human Services is working with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to financially support rural communities as they take on health IT improvement projects including EHR adoption, health information exchange, telehealth services, and more.... read more

Did you have a chance to check out the latest healthcare IT news stories around the Web? We’ve captured the top industry news stories from this week that you won’t want to miss.
And if you're attending ACC.15 in San Diego this week, be sure to stop by LUMEDX Booth #523! Schedule a meeting here.
ACC 2015 Scientific Sessions: Contemporary Cardiology Embellished With San Diego Sunshine
Medscape reports on ACC.15, taking place from March 14-16, 2015 in San Diego, CA. The conference will cover the latest trials and discussions on issues facing cardiology every day, including studies exploring imaging modalities for chest pain, optimal antiplatelets post PCI and in chronic CAD, and much more.
How CPOE Can Reduce Length of Stay
According to Health IT News, computerized provider order entry (CPOE) can help reduce length of stay when used in conjunction with bedside bar coding and electronic health records. A study published in Applied Clinical Informatics in July 2014 found ... read more

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